Stuck in Phoenix

Yup that's right, I'm in Phoenix Arizona and not Hawaii. Why? Because Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport has decided to hold myself, my family and friends hostage. Our flight from Newark to Phoenix was text book. We even arrived early in Phoenix giving us plenty of time to eat and relax. Then 9:30am rolled around and we were waiting at the gate and and our plane turned out to have mechanical failures. They almost, yes almost, cancelled our flight but since it's the only flight out to Lihue in a day they "found" a plane arriving from Los Cabos Mexico. However the plane from Mexico wont' arrive until 1:45pm and then it needs to be cleaned and quarantined because it's an international flight. So that doesn't put us out until 3pm PST. We'll arrive in Lihue around 7pm. Grr.

On top of that, my FMIL's husband spent ALL day at the Atlanta-Hartsfield airport in Georgia dealing with a mechanical failure and ended up not being re-booked. So he's turned around and gone home. Hopefully he'll be set to fly out tomorrow morning and arrive in Lihue around 2pm and be on the same flight as my Uncle Ernie and his family.

What drama. I vow NEVER ever to get married in Hawaii again. :)

Leaving on a Jet Plane...

Holy cow! I feel like I've waited for forever for this day to come, to go to Hawaii and to get married! We off to the airport in a couple of hours, at 4:30am but now it's time to doze in and out of sleep while waiting anxious in anticipation of the 13 hour flight and paradise.

Actually I did the dozing already and Nick and I are heading out to pick up our friends Mike & Michell. The car service will be here at 4:30am!

Have fun not being in Hawaii ... I'll be sure to post pictures at the very least!

The Cake Better Be Made of Gold Bars!

Yesterday Nick and I went to Carlos' Bakery in Hoboken NJ to try out some potential wedding cake. I need to first say something ... I do not really like baked goods at all. I think cakes tend to be to fluffy and frostings not so good or too sweet. I always try cake in hopes that I'll find one that I can tolerate.

Let's rewind a bit to tell how I came across Carlos' Bakery. Being an avid watcher of the wedding shows on television I knew lots about Carlos' Bakery. But last fall, my friend son turned 1 and had a cake from Carlos' - I had two pieces. That's just how good it is.

Our tasting yesterday begin with coffee, excellent coffee, brewed and made to perfection! Carlos' starts off in the lead with a thumbs up for their coffee. Next we were presented with two cake books listing the flavors and cake choices. It seems limited, but once you start tasting it's really not with the various filling and cake combinations. Anyhow, we started by trying to figure out the design of the cake and what we wanted it to look like. We have a rough idea but haven't committed yet. Anyhow we're basically looking at $1000-$1200 for a cake that will feed about 150 people. This includes delivery fee to East Brunswick.


This cake seemed to be the winner in shape and a similar design ...

I was being talked into a gold and red cake but I felt that there's enough red and gold at the reception to go around so we decided a brown base would be nice. Not sure if we'd go with red ribbon or gold but the dots would definitely be white. I'm also a little unsure of the quilting and the big bow on top. It's a cake dammit.

Anyhow the pretty cake, delivery and sheet cakes for there rest comes to $1000. That's right you heard me, $1000. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.

At the tasting we had bites of:

• red velvet with cream cheesing filling
• red velvet with vanilla icing filling
• carrot cake with cream cheese filling
• vanilla cake with
• chocolate cake with ganache filling
• chocolate cake with mousse
• chocolate and vanilla cake with hazelnut filling
• chocolate cake with fudge filling

The consensus is that it was some good cake. MY favorite was the chocolate with chocolate ganache. Nick was very curious about the fondant icing and so we were able to try some white fondant icing and some chocolate fondant icing (which tastes like tootsie rolls).

I give Carlos' Bakery an A because I'll even eat the cake and I am no cake person and price well ... I am not thinking about it. I know I should but I can't right now.

What's a girl to do? I've called around to some known-by-word-of-mouth bakeries but either I wasn't sure about the bakery or, one in particular, did not do tastings. $*($*&*$# Yeah that's right NO TASTINGS!

Pretty things

Isn't this stuff pretty? I know you're asking, "What is this?" This happens to be the remnants from my dress being hemmed and then, presto chango, embroidered with our initials and wedding date. what I am doing with them will be a surprise. You'll have to wait until after the wedding to see the final use. I do promise that it's WONDERFUL!

Invitations are out!

Last week we finally sent out the invitations to the Chinese reception. Here's a look at the invitation set, complete with RSVP, invitation and map of reception site and hotel.


Now let me tell you about the drama behind it. First you should know that Chinese invitations tend to trend towards the corny and even tacky. These invitations were the best at the two print shops I checked in Chinatown. My very first issue with the invitations happened when we were looking at invitations. The paper insert that has the printed information was pink. Yes crayon pink and there was something funky going on in the paper, almost like mulberrry paper where the fibers are visable. That was a no go and I knew enough to inquire about alternatives and was told that it'd be no problem. Then we had to proof the invitations. I headed down to Chinatown (haha, that rhymed) during lunch one day and dropped off the wording. At this visit I learned that the paper that I decided on to have the text printed wouldn't work because of the invitations I picked out but after some back and forth the printer was able to locate paper that would work. Then we went back and forth twice on the wording and voila we were done and just had to have them printed. The print shop said they'd be done in a week so I said I'd stop by Satuday morning and pick them up ...

A week passed and it was Saturday morning and I decided to go to Chinatown before heading to my FSIL's house. I showed up around 10:30am and was told the invitations weren't ready and would be in about an hour and a half. WHAT!#@! I didn't have time to wait around and with a panic attack about to occur I left and ended up calling my mom. We collectively figured out that perhaps we can take half of them and at least start getting them put together and addressed. I hopped out of the car and popped back into the print shop to inquire about taking part of the batch. I walked into the shop and the employees where no where to be found but smack in front of my face, on the counter, were MY invitations. The employees walked out and I knew that very moment that those PUNKS had not even started printing the invitations. ARGH!

I had no choice but to call it quits and head to FSIL's. I ended up taking the subway on Monday, during my lunch hour, to Chinatown to pick them up. Boohoo. But now all the invitation drama is over and the RSVPs are rolling in.

United Printing in Chinatown gets a C- in my book.

I'm starting to get excited...

I am finally starting to get excited about our upcoming wedding (14 days) and trip to Hawaii (11 days). Today someone at work reminded me that the days are flying by and I actually got giddy.

Another exciting wedding thing happened today ... something very awesome arrived in the mail today all the way from Taiwan! My dad's family (my grandparents and aunts) bought me a custom made qipao for the Chinese banquet. I have a total of three dresses I will be wearing, (1) my Nicole Miller gown, (2) a traditional Chinese 2 piece dress suit from China and (3) the qipao. Here's a swatch of the material.

It is seriously gorgous and I was super super pleased with how it came out. My Aunt Susan asked that I send my measurements and boy where we worried but alas it fits perfectly!

My Bachelorette Party - Part II

Our adorable toes with fresh polish ...

After our toes dried we headed over to Rivolis for dinner. That's us (Mandy, me, Joan, Bev and Diane) at dinner posing with our very large portions.

As you can see the portions are certainly huge. Those platters could serve Thankgiving turkey on it for a small family! I was able to make 4 meals out of my order of Shrimp De Micci.

Thanks for a great night girls!

My Bachelorette Party - Part I

I was just plucky with having a Bridal Shower and nothing else. My bridesmaids didn't think that was enough and knew I was a bit of a prude so they threw me a very tame and small gathering this past weekend. On Saturday I arrived at my FMIL and MOH's house to find this ...
Then we headed over to Freehold Raceway Mall to meet up with my other bridesmaid, Diane and her mom, and Mandy's aunt, Beverly. Upon our arrival I was promptly given a gift full of tulle and prettiness. The gift was the Night at the Museum DVD and announced the plans for the day: "shopping, mani/pedi and dinner with portions the size of my big head." The shopping plans were mainly to find dresses for the girls. We started off at Nordstrom but had no luck in store - it turns out that the online inventory has far more to offer. Strangely enough the ladies at this Nordstrom were quite snooty and I've never ever experienced that before...hopefully they were just having on off day. Since we had no luck at Nordstrom, upon my FMIL's suggestion, we headed over to Lord & Taylor where we spent a good 2-3 hours and hit the dress jackpot! Both Mandy and Diane found the same dress for the reception and on sale. On top of that two very generous ladies allowed them to "borrow" their 20% off coupons.

After the dress success we headed to find shoes for the girls and ended up finding this gorgeous Nine West Accolia sandal. Nine West was out of their size but I just knew Macy's would have them in stock. Macy's had them so I bought 2 pairs and got to use a 20% off coupon. (If you didn't already know ... I am "CJ" aka "Coupon Jen" to Nick's family.)All the shopping was a success so it was time to move on to manicures and pedicures. To be continued...